by Nick Harrow
“You don’t even know,” Arthur laughed. He was restored now, his healed flesh visible through the bloodstained tear in his suit. “Ray stopped nothing. She moved our timetable up, but this is what the boss always wanted. She’d hoped to have a few more contingencies in place, but shit happens, am I right? She’s got another little surprise in the works, too. Bet Ray doesn’t know shit about that.”
Arthur shrugged.
Gunnar spun the blade in a vicious overhand arc, and the jötunn took the blow to the shoulder without flinching, his maddening smile never faltering. Trickles of smoke leaked out of the tears Gunnar opened in Arthur’s clothing, but no more blood spilled. The wounds healed as fast as Gunnar inflicted them. “Fucking die!” the jarl howled and drove his spear into the jötunn’s chest.
“You fool,” Arthur said with a shake of his head. “Hyrrokkin needs me. There is no wound you can inflict on me that her fires can’t seal. Your pathetic attacks are no more bother than bee stings.”
Gunnar’s eyes narrowed and followed Arthur’s slow walk around him. There was a clue in what the jötunn had said, if only he could find it. He thrust the spear into his enemy’s side again, tearing through the black suit and unleashing a gout of smoke and fire, but no blood. He scanned the jötunn’s body, looking for some sign of weakness. But seams of fire had sealed every wound the creature had suffered. Even his arm...
A shiny, blue-and-black lump of scar tissue had sealed the end of Arthur’s forearm.
With a ferocious battle cry, Gunnar leapt into the air and drove Gungnir through Arthur’s chest. As the jötunn laughed, the jarl put everything he had into forcing his nemesis to the ground. The spear’s tip buried itself in the ground and pinned Arthur like a squirming bug on a specimen board.
“You’ll never learn,” Arthur spat. He began tearing the spear through his body again, wriggling sideways. “You keep trying to brute force your way through everything. It won’t save you this time, Gunnar, and it won’t save that group of broken women you’ve dragged all over the city on your little treasure hunt. You can’t kill me.”
Gunnar stepped down on Arthur’s chest, putting all his weight on the man’s cracked ribs. “Sometimes brute force is the answer.” He knelt on Arthur’s chest and grabbed the jötunn’s left arm at the wrist and elbow.
The jarl strained against the monster’s strength. As powerful as the jötunn was, though, he lacked leverage. Bit by bit, Gunnar bent the creature’s arm above its head, twisting it until the shoulder joint groaned. And then, with a wet pop, ligaments snapped, nerves tore, and the arm went loose and wobbly in Gunnar’s grip.
“Fuck you,” Arthur snarled through teeth gritted in pain. “Torturing me gains you nothing. Hyrrokkin has foreseen your every action. No matter what you do, she has a contingency in place to stop you.”
Gunnar stood and pulled Arthur’s arm straight up from his body. Bones cracked and flesh parted, strand by strand. The seams in the jötunn’s fancy suit tore loose, and the arm followed them a moment later. The jarl dangled the severed limb over Arthur’s face.
“Well,” he said, “look at that. It didn’t bleed at all. Still came right off, though, didn’t it?”
The limb twitched and writhed in Gunnar’s grip, but the grisly, truncated end had already scarred over and an ugly burn line had sealed the shoulder. Hyrrokkin’s gift had saved Arthur from bleeding out.
But it hadn’t healed him.
And from the look on the jötunn’s face, Arthur now realized the limitations of her dark gift.
“Stop,” he said, his voice strangely calm. “Stop, and I’ll tell you what she has planned. You have to—”
Arthur screamed as Gunnar went to work on his leg. Agonizing seconds punctuated with gnarly pops and cracks passed while the jötunn wailed, not at the pain of the wound, but the horror of his looming fate.
“I don’t care what she has planned,” Gunnar growled and flung the tattered leg into the ceremonial fire. “Whatever it is, I’ll stop it. Just like I stopped the ritual at the Luxor. Like I stopped you here.”
Minutes passed while the jarl dismembered the jötunn. He wanted Arthur to hurt. He wanted the asshole to understand how much pain he’d caused. Gunnar couldn’t ever get the years he’d lost to this man’s machinations, but he could at least make the fucker hurt.
But even that didn’t work out quite the way Gunnar had hoped. Hyrrokkin’s magic had hardened Arthur. The man grunted and groaned as the jarl worked him over, but he didn’t scream or cry out again.
Frustrated, Gunnar tossed each limb into the fire, then watched as the clothes burned away from them. Shoes worth more than a used car burst into flame. The tailored suit was nothing but rags when it entered the fire, and soon those were black smoke twisting into the sky. The blue skin beneath the fine clothes remained. Even as it blackened and bubbled, it didn’t burn away. Hyrrokkin’s gift kept the dumb meat alive, even in the fire’s mouth.
Gunnar went back to Arthur’s limbless torso. He stared down at the jötunn’s pathetic face and shook his head. “You know, once upon a time I thought we’d be friends,” he said. “Do you ever wonder how things might have been if you hadn’t fucked me over?”
Real fear had taken root in Arthur’s eyes. “Hear me out,” he pleaded. “You don’t know what comes next. I can help you. Listen to me. You need to hear this.”
The jarl scoffed at the jötunn’s words. “Answer the question. Think about it. What would our lives have been like if you hadn’t screwed me for a lousy promotion?”
“How could I know then?” Arthur said. “I thought it was just a job, Gunnar. I had no idea where it all ended.”
Gunnar hoisted Arthur into the air by one horn and hauled his body to the ceremonial fire. “That’s the whole point, you stupid asshole. You never even considered a better way. If we’d worked together, maybe we could have stopped Kyrolina’s idiotic plan from ever getting this far. Maybe none of this had to happen. But, no. You set off the chain reaction that almost ruined my life, nearly ended the world, all to put a few extra dollars in your pocket and pad your resume.”
“Stop,” Arthur begged. “I was wrong, okay? I fucked up. Let me help you make it better. Think about it, Gunnar. I could be your most useful ally.”
Gunnar shook his head. “No, you think about it. About all the needless pain and horror you caused or let happen. Think about that while you burn.”
With that, the jarl tossed his hated enemy into the heart of the ceremonial fire. He watched while the jötunn burned, his flesh blackening. Arthur screamed and screamed, his voice tattered until, at last, it gave out. But his whimpers went on, the endless cry of a fool who’d realized he’d gambled everything on a sure thing.
And lost.
“It’s over,” Ray whispered as she took Gunnar’s hand. “Thank you.”
Mimi slipped in beside and wrapped an arm around his waist, while Bridget took her other hand. The four of them stared at their enemy in the fire, wondering how long he would last, and what the future held.
Gunnar decided the future wasn’t important just then. All that mattered was that they’d saved the world. They were safe together. The rest would work itself out. The time for battle was over. Now the healing and rebuilding could begin.
“Let’s go home,” Gunnar said.
They turned their back on the ceremonial fire and began the trek across the field of the dead.
Gunnar felt empty. His victory had been far less sweet than he’d imagined over these past years. Even knowing how Arthur suffered wasn’t enough. Killing the jötunn had ended a threat, but it wouldn’t buy back all the lost time or lonely nights the fucker had caused. The jarl pondered that, his eyes on the horizon.
“What the hell?” Mimi snarled. “Gunnar!”
The völva kicked at a dead hand locked around her ankle, its fingers closed like a vise. The jarl stamped down on the thing’s arm and yanked Mimi away from it, but more of the dead crawled toward them. Those who were whole str
uggled to regain their feet, while torn limbs dragged themselves toward the group.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” Hyrrokkin called from the heart of the fire. Her naked body glowed within the inferno, and her horns jetted smoke into the sky. “You’ve cost me a great deal today, Odin’s pawn. Consider these hungry dead my parting gift. We will meet again.”
The fire leapt from one corpse to another, setting them ablaze, fueling their hunger. The undead horde shambled toward Gunnar and the völva, eager to taste their flesh.
Chapter 27
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, ODIN,” Gunnar shouted. “Can we catch one lousy break?”
The burning dead had surrounded them. Bodies lurched into motion and threw themselves at the jarl and his völva, who’d formed into a defensive circle out of instinct. Mimi’s blades flashed like shooting stars, ripping limbs off the zombies as they attacked. Ray drilled arrows into the faces of their enemies in a rapid-fire blur. Bridget’s axe chopped undead in half with every swing, showering her with blood and gore. And Gunner’s spear dove through one undead skull after another, as smooth and mechanical as a piston in a finely tuned engine.
But even their furious assault couldn’t hold the dead at bay forever. Already the zombies had forced the team into a tighter circle until their shoulders touched as the noose closed around them. In a few more minutes they’d be up to their eyeballs in burning corpses. There wouldn’t even be room to swing a knife.
“What do we do?” Ray shouted.
“Fight!” Gunnar growled. “Kill them for as long as you have breath.”
Bridget backhanded one monster with a greaved forearm, smashing its brains out before burying the head of her axe in another foe. “This is not our time to die. Do not give up, sisters!”
Gunnar wasn’t sure how they’d survive. There were too many undead, and he heard the war cries of living creatures approaching. The battle was grinding them all down. Small wounds appeared on their arms and faces, little nicks added up to sap their strength and slow their swings. As powerful as the jarl and his völva had become, there were limits to even their strength.
Even worse, the dead gave up no hamingja when they fell to the ground.
“Should we give Gunnar our sight?” Mimi asked. “Maybe he can use it to clear a path out of here.”
Bridget drove the butt of her axe’s handle through the eye socket of a burning zombie. She kicked its body away, then whirled the weapon over her head and brought it down in a scything arc that took three more heads. “There’s no time,” she said, an icy chill in her words. “They’ll tear us apart if we stop fighting for a moment.”
And so they fought. Black blood sizzled to the burning ground. Severed hands clawed their ankles, dead fingers tried to climb up their legs. Smoke choked the air with the reek of scorched flesh. Hyrrokkin’s undead army was relentless, refusing to surrender even as the jarl spun his spear to crush their legs and sever arms and heads.
Gunnar could hardly see through the haze of heat and steam, trusting his instincts and the bond to Gungnir to find his enemies. Sweat rolled off him in rivulets despite the freezing wind that blasted through the boneyard with an endless howl. He whirled like a dervish, using momentum to turn the spear into a spinning cleaver. Attacks bounced off the weapon’s haft as it spun like the spokes of a threshing wheel. Quick sweeps pushed the burning dead back, but Gunnar needed more space. His spear punched through two blazing skulls with a single thrust, clearing the air in front of him as his enemies collapsed to the ground. Through the gap, the jarl saw jötnar entering the courtyard. They wore urban camouflage torn open to accommodate their enormous bodies. Unlike the other monsters, these moved with military precision. They carried heavy spears, hafts as thick as a man’s forearm. They bore shields constructed from car doors or cut out of dumpsters. The advance pushed the burning zombies ahead of them, tightening the circle even more.
It took Gunnar only a moment to realize where these new troops had come from. He remembered the dull thump of helicopter rotors hacking through the air above the Strip. The National Guard must have come to Vegas to control the situation.
The poor bastards had gotten infected, and now they marched under Hyrrokkin’s flag.
His heart sank, the dark reality of the battle settling into his thoughts. He couldn’t kill all these fuckers. It was impossible.
But he refused to go down without a fight. He let the berserker rage overtake him, felt it throb through the connection to the völva. Their high-pitched screeches joined his battle roar and clawed toward the sky.
Gunnar swung his spear like a baseball bat, its length crashing through jötunn skulls in a gory spray. The völva obliterated their foes with deadly precision and wild strength. They fought like a single entity, all of their bodies in perfect synchronicity as they used the last of their flagging strength to make these assholes pay for their sins.
Far overhead, a raven circled the battlefield like a buzzard. It called out, a single, thunderous peal that drew the jarl’s eyes to the sky.
“If you won’t get your lazy ass down here to fight, fuck off,” he shouted as his spear split a zombie down the middle. “I’ve no time for useless gods who cry on their thrones while their people die.”
As if in answer, the raven cawed once more and soared south, its great wings beating through the smoky skies.
“That’s what I thought,” Gunnar muttered, then steeled himself for the oncoming charge of Hyrrokkin’s elite forces.
He didn’t have to wait long. The bruisers advanced through the wreckage of the burning undead, using their spears and shields to shunt aside the weaker troops. The jötnar charged in a column four wide and at least ten deep, feet pounding the ground like the first tremors of an impending earthquake. They roared as they closed the distance, ropy strings of saliva flung from their jagged tusks and gnashing teeth.
Gunnar glared at that front rank, daring them to come at him, his spear thirsty for their blood. He wanted to unleash the Stormur again, but his energy was too low. The battle with the zombies had run him and his people dry. Instead, he raised Gungnir over his shoulder, both hands wrapped around its haft, and charged at the enemy.
He was nimbler than the jötnar and dodged between the tips of their charging spears. He shouldered aside one weapon, twisting its wielder out of the shield wall and opening a gap in their defenses. The jarl thrust his spear up under the creature’s ribs, through its heart, and straight out its back. Gunnar reveled in the shower of blood that poured from the thing’s gasping mouth, then kicked it off Gungnir and into the second rank.
Gunnar disrupted the charge of the jötnar, giving the völva more room to work. Ray’s bow sang a hymn of slaughter, crystalline arrows streaming from the trembling string, turning their enemies into bleeding pincushions. Mimi darted under spears and around shields, her razor-sharp blades slicing through tendons and plunging into guts. Bridget’s battle axe sundered a shield and the jötunn wielding it in a spray of blood and bone. But the jarl knew it wouldn’t be enough. The undead were still all around them, tripping them up, the severed limbs kicking and clawing while those who remained standing came on in a relentless tide
And then a battered Dodge Ram 2500 exploded through the fortress’s gate and slammed into the rear of the jötnar unit with an unholy scream of tortured metal and breaking bones. Deke sprayed automatic fire from an MP5 through the windshield, while his son leaned out the window and let rip with an AA-12. Those weapons did a number on the former guardsmen, but it was Erin who brought the heat.
She manned the pintle-mounted four-barreled machine gun and poured hot lead into the jötnar. Her scream rose above the relentless thunder the weapon unleashed, a victory cry that struck terror into the hearts of the gathered monsters. Before the jötnar could react, the weapons had shredded half their number.
“This is it!” Gunnar shouted. “Push them back!”
He and the völva pressed forward into the panicked jötnar. Gunnar
took advantage of the shocking rear attack to take out another rank of fighters. Spears and stray bullets ricocheted from his armor, and still the jarl pressed on. The bloodlust was on him, and all that mattered was the thrill of battle. Blood sprayed around him and bones shattered, jötnar screamed and howled, and he roared right back at them.
The machine gun fire died, and Gunnar went on killing anything that got near him. He absorbed hamingja from the fallen jötnar elites and used it to heal himself, but the wounds were adding up. His left arm hung limp and useless from its shattered socket, the right side of his face was a mask of sticky blood from a wound opened above his eye, and there was something wrong with his left leg.
He didn’t care. If this was how he died, at least the jarl knew he’d find his way to Valhalla. When he got there, he’d punch Odin square in the balls for this clusterfuck.
He roared again, certain it would be the last sound he ever made. He couldn’t kill the jötnar fast enough to keep up with the wounds he’d accumulated. The creatures swarmed him and separated Gunnar from his allies. The völva were still alive. He felt their rage at the jötnar like fires in his belly, but the battle was lost. There just weren’t enough bodies on his side of the field.
“For the jarl!” Erin shouted, and Gunnar heard the galloping opening chords of “The Immigrant Song” blast from the truck’s sound system. Robert Plant’s eerie wail kicked in, and other voices raised in a howling response. Twenty warriors, clad in chainmail and helms, flooded around the truck, axes and swords catching the noonday sun.
Gunnar’s people slammed into the jötnar in a bloodthirsty mob. Their blades hacked into blue flesh and unleashed freshets of black blood. Boots churned the earth into a bloody swamp. They were relentless in their bloodlust, and their battle cries filled Gunnar with new strength.
The people he’d saved had returned the favor.
The jarl thrust his spear to the sky and howled, “Óðinn á yðr alla!”